14 May 2005 Blog Home : May 2005 : Permalink
Former French minister Charles Pasqua says he has been falsely named in the Iraq oil scandal as part of a US bid to discredit President Jacques Chirac.
Mr Pasqua told French TV that US senators who accused him of receiving oil rights from Saddam Hussein were gripped by an anti-French obsession.
He said the US was convinced that France had opposed the war in Iraq out of economic self-interest. [...]
"Perhaps also those who are targeting Jacques Chirac through me ignore that the nature of our relationship has changed, at least politically, and they are mistaken if they think that I am in a position to influence French policy," he said.
He said there was "a real obsession" in the US - "an obsession which consists of saying that if France took a hostile stance against American intervention in Iraq, it was because of economic interests or privileged relations it might have had with Saddam Hussein."
Interestingly the Americans seem to far from alone in thinking that the French could be induced to support Hussein with a few oily contributions. The Torygraph reports today that the Hussein regime tried to give money to a number of the movers and shakers including l'Escroc himself.A paper dated Feb 5, 2002, headed "Iraqi-French relations" and written by the assistant director of the Mukhabarat, suggested that Iraq should offer inducements to whoever seemed best placed to win the presidential race, which Mr Chirac ultimately won three months later.
Iraq should "study the possibility to support one of the candidates in the French political elections, after it becomes clear who is going to win the elections, through the offer of oil contracts . . ." the paper says.
[...]The planned campaign included a long list of potential targets that read like a who's who of the country's senior statesmen.
It included former President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, former interior minister Charles Pasqua, former defence and interior minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement, former defence and interior minister Pierre Joxe and former European Commission president Jacques Delors.
Apparently l'Escroc rejected the offer, possibly a unique moment in the history of the French Presidency if true, and the other people on the list have similarly denied being stupid enough to take money from the Iraqi Secret Service or indeed that they ever talked to an Iraqi.